Wednesday, 23 September 2015

Book review: 1965, blow by blow

Monsoon War
will probably find a place on military history library shelves as the
definitive work on the 1965 Indo-Pakistan war by two co-authors who are uniquely
qualified to write it.

Captain
Amarinder Singh, now Maharaja of Patiala, was then earning his spurs as a
regular officer in the army. After being commissioned in 1963, he served during
the war as aide-de-camp to its most important commander, Lieutenant General
Harbaksh Singh, who commanded all Indian ground forces that fought Pakistan.
Besides his ringside view of Harbaksh’s decision-making, Amarinder’s
perspective benefits from his subsequent political career, and his avocation as
a military historian and author of well-regarded books on World War I and the 1999
Kargil conflict.

Amrinder’s
co-author, Lt Gen Tajinder Shergill, brings to the book a different, but
equally valuable, perspective. Shergill was a young armoured corps commander in
the Khemkaran sector, which saw one of the campaign’s crucial battles in which
a Pakistani armoured division was halted and destroyed. Shergill was taken
prisoner at the end of the war, eventually spending months in a Pakistani
prisoner-of-war camp. A thinking general, he provides insightful analysis on
armoured warfare and higher military leadership during the war, which has been often
criticised as timid, without viewing it through the prism of the time.

These two
authors have produced a page-turner that can be criticised only for being
overly detailed. Weighing a hefty 2.4 kilogrammes and choc-a-block with maps
and bunker-by-bunker battle accounts, this book is not for the weak of wrist or
short of attention. This is a one-stop shop for those seeking the complete
story of 1965, including the international and sub-continental geopolitical
landscape, personality sketches of the key protagonists (Spoiler alert: Field
Marshal Ayub Khan was a coward), and riveting snippets of the politics of higher
military command.

Monsoon War
is handsomely produced. It is crammed with well-captioned black and white
photographs, many from personal collections of soldiers who had participated in
the fighting. Making it easier to follow are 136 detailed maps that illustrate
the terrain and deployment of troops for various battles. There are also
detailed appendices listing out commanders, orders of battle, lists of aircraft
shot down, summaries of losses, and so on.

While
unabashedly an Indian account of the war, the book adds authenticity by also
drawing heavily from Pakistani documents. It concludes that India emerged the
winner because Pakistan failed in its strategic objective of wresting Kashmir
through force; and India’s military inflicted heavy damage on Pakistan’s
vaunted war machine that the United States and its allies in North Atlantic
Treaty Organisation had built up. This was where Ayub Khan’s skill lay, say the
authors: in convincing a naïve Washington that Pakistan was its only true
friend in the sub-continent and a bulwark against expansion of Soviet influence
into South Asia.

Today,
India is confident of its military superiority to Pakistan. But in the early
1960s, Washington’s friendship had equipped Pakistan with nine regiments of M-47
and M-48 Patton tanks that were clearly better than Indian armour, except for
four regiments of Centurion tanks. In the air, Pakistan’s fighter fleet included
eight squadrons of F-86 Sabres and one squadron of the world-class F-104 Starfighter;
far more effective than India’s large, but obsolescent, fighter fleet. Yet, on
the ground, at least three Pakistani armoured regiments were wiped out in the
fighting, even as others were badly depleted.

Much is made
today about a “two-front threat” to India from Pakistan and China acting in
concert. Yet, as Monsoon War brings out vividly, the “two-front threat” seemed
far more real then. The hiding of 1962 was fresh in Indian memories. The
China-Pakistan axis was getting daily stronger after Islamabad ceded to Beijing
the 5,000 square kilometre Shaksgam Valley, in Gilgit-Baltistan, in 1963.
China’s vice premier, Marshal Chen Yi, was voicing his solidarity with
Pakistan. And China was not just arming and training Naga rebels in Yunan
province, but had also massed 15 army divisions along the Sino-Indian border.
As the book brings out, India went into the Monsoon War weak, underequipped and
under severe threat, but it emerged victorious.

Amongst the
most readable parts of the book are the detailed battle accounts: Major (later
lieutenant general) Ranjit Dayal’s heroic capture of the Haji Pir Pass with his
troops from 1 PARA; the gritty, hand-to-hand battle by 2 SIKH to capture Raja
picquet, high above Poonch; the audacious capture of Dograi, on Lahore’s
outskirts, by Lieutenant Colonel Desmond Hayde and his heroes of 3 JAT; the
decimation of Pakistan’s armoured division at Khemkaran by 3 CAVALRY and the
slogging, tank-versus-tank battle at Phillora in which HODSON’S HORSE destroyed
more Pakistani tanks than any other Indian regiment.

The book
unsparingly describes the debacles too: an ill-prepared Indian air force that
was out-thought and out-fought by the Pakistanis; and the inexcusable
abandonment by Major General Niranjan Prasad of his jeep, and maps marked with
battle plans, which fell into Pakistani hands.

It has
taken 50 years to write a comprehensive history of the 1965 war. I hope the
authors lose no time in starting work on a similar account of the 1971 war.
They have only six years.

9 comments:

Hope Amarinder also provides a reason, and excuse, for his boss, Gen Harbaksh refusing to obey an order given by the Chief. Another General who did same, and was never punished for such a major military crime, was Gen Jacob.

A great effort indeed. Quite a useful book for those who visitd those battle areas as professionals. The best part was free hand given to Army by the PM to do what needed to be done.. including going across border, unlike in 1962.

Capt.Gohar Ayub Khan (former foreign minister of Pakistan and Son of Pak Dictator Gen Ayub Khan) states that India lost bitterly. He mentions the Indian Losses at 2500+ casualties, 36 Aircraft destroyed and 190 tanks destroyed. On the other hand he cites that Pak lost 1200 soldies 130 tanks and 19 Aircrafts.